Though I say “yes I see”, no I really don't see (is my smiley face still on?): beer (brewing and drinking), camping, eating, hugging trees, kiting, fishing, ironing, hiking, geocaching and munzing, painting (oils, emulsion and gloss), ranting, recording history as I see it. Days with family, days with friends, days with granddogs. Always an opinion (always wrong), and rarely a dull moment. Welcome to my world... remember - history is written by those who make the effort to write it.

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3 October 2011 (Monday) - Cheddar Gorge

Another 8am brekkie. This one was somewhat
marred by having to make polite conversation with the normal people who were
also staying in the B&B. But with brekkie scofffed we soon set off.

We gave ‘er indoors TMsat-nav
one last chance, and it’s fair to say the device exceeded the misgivings of
even it’s staunchest critics. It waited until we came to the second roundabout
of the journey, directed us back to the first roundabout, and then tried to get
us to drive to and fro between the roundabouts.

I'd had enough, and I got my sat-nav out.
That gave us some no-nonsense directions, and soon we
were in Cheddar. We parked up, and managing to shake off the old biddy who
wouldn't shut up about the courtesy bus tour, we paid up and were soon in the
first cave. Apparently opened up in the early 1900s by some bloke called Gough,
the cave had a really good audio tour, and had loads of bats flitting about.
Despite the ill-behaved schoolbrats swarming, we were in this cave for over an
hour.

We then went over to the Museum of Dull
Drivel. Some sad act was loitering outside, dressed up as a caveman, and I
explained to him about the flint tools he was brandishing. We then went into
the Museum of Dull Drivel. I suppose it wasn't that bad, but compared to
Gough's cave it was dull.

Cox's cave was next, and with no audio guide,
that too was dull, The cave led into the Crystal Grotto: a cave with a few
scary statues strategically placed here and there. This was quite entertaining.

From here we thought we'd scale the steps to
the lookout tower. Several hundred steps took us to the lowest part of the hills
overlooking the gorge, and having had a quick look from the lookout tower, we
walked, scrambled and climbed up even further along the Cheddar Gorge Walk.

The views from the top of the hills were
wonderful, but we were somewhat dismayed by one small fact. The walk was billed
as a circular walk. Up one side of the gorge, along, down to the road, back up
the other side, and back to the village.

There was an endless stream of people walking
back from the direction in which we were heading; all complaining that they
weren’t going to do more hills. From where we were, we could see across the gorge
to the footpath on the other side. Not many brave souls had got that far. But
we weren’t going to back out. So having climbed up several miles to the top, we
then went down to the road, and then went up an equal number of miles on the
other side. And came down again. But it was worth going back up again: if only
to see the goats.

The walk was billed as lasting for two hours:
we took two and a half. It was a good walk – but in retrospect the good weather
helped a lot. I could imagine that the weather could make it a very miserable
walk indeed.

Once back down we popped into a nearby café (selling “Styles” ice cream!), and we
realised we’d then done all of the attractions. The courtesy bus tour wasn’t
running today, and to be honest I couldn’t see exactly what good the bus tour
would have been – you could walk the length of the touristy bit in just five
minutes.

So we perused the gift shop, and set off back
to the B&B. We’d originally planned to visit Wookey Hole today as well, but
we didn’t have time to do it all.

The journey back took twice as long as we
were expecting: we got caught in traffic in Bath. But once back, we set off to
the Crown, for another very good meal. And some zider. After all, you can’t go
to Zumerzet and not drink zider…